


mercy on me (mercy on my soul)

by queenofthestarrrs



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Afterlife, F/M, Ghosts, Kylo Ren Redemption, Resurrection, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Trailer, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 04:50:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21238454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthestarrrs/pseuds/queenofthestarrrs
Summary: He had always expected he would die young, in the vein of his father before him.





	mercy on me (mercy on my soul)

He had always expected he would die young, in the vein of his father before him.

-

He remembered his father always saying that when he was a young child. He would be scampering through the airy place they called home, feeling the wind ripple through his dark hair. His father would be chasing him, and he would periodically stop to lament a popping joint or an achy back. Ben would inevitably circle back to his father’s feet. He’d watch carefully as momentary pain or frustration would flash over Han’s face as he kneaded out his knee or his elbow with his thick and calloused fingers. The day’s sunlight would always illuminate the places where Han’s hair had turned a bright silver. 

“What’s wrong, Papa?” Ben asked, worried beyond measure that his father was seriously injured. Even as a child, he had always known that there was some kind of power brewing underneath the surface, knew that he had the capacity to hurt others. 

“Just getting old, kid,” Han would reply back. He’d always close his eyes and wince at this part. “Never really expected this to happen.”

Ben looked at him in confusion. As a boy, he never imagined a world without his father’s commanding presence. 

Of course, naturally, Han would then scoop up Ben in his arms, even when Ben had grown long spindly limbs and was much older than a toddler who needed to be physically held by his father. He’d tickle him, their laughs ringing through the hallway. It was an act that had always radiated an unexpected joy, and Han would find it soothing and intoxicating to have the power to make the frustrated look of concern melt away from his son’s face. Han may have never thought he would grow old. He was damn glad he did though. 

  
  


-

The pain in his chest was piercing, burning, and red hot. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see a lightsaber, buzzing and angry, protruding from his body. The light reflected poorly off his ghostly skin, illuminating the sharpness of his face and the dullness of his eyes. He coughed a little bit and a bit of gurgling blood over spilled from his mouth onto the tarnished steel of the floor and down the front of his shirt. It was as red as the weapon that it seeped into. 

He had expected that he deserved it, after everything that he had done. He had always been aware of what he had chosen to do, the murder, the fearmongering, the torture, was unequivocally wrong. There was always a voice nagging in his ear and a pain breaking in his chest. In some parts of his life, he had attributed that voice to his uncle - his kind and gentle and loving presence always urging him to find the best in himself and others. Later, after he and Luke had nearly killed one another - avunculicide and nepoticide walking hand in hand - he had attributed the voice to the Light Side of the Force. And as Snoke had always told him, he must bury anything associated with it. 

Rey looked in him abject horror. The bodies of those they had fought off together were strewn across the floor, his blood and theirs mingling. And here he was, standing in front of her, dying. She grasped at her own chest, her hands illuminated in the angry red light, searching for her own phantom wound. When she found nothing, she grabbed at her chest and looked at him, eyes frozen in a look of complete terror. 

  
“Ben,” she called to him softly. 

The world was beginning to fade to black, a strangely familiar fuzziness crawling in at the edges of his vision. He coughed again. More warm blood spilled from his mouth. It is so warm that it almost burnt his freezing cheeks as it seeped down his face and his neck. 

“Ben” she repeated.

His body became weak and begins to sway. He could feel his knees beginning to buckle, and his arms felt too heavy and weak to put them out in front of his body to stop his fall. He can do nothing but let himself crumple. The blood began to pool at the edge of his mouth and onto the floor, and he closed his eyes, giving in to the feeling of lead.    
  
What an undeserved blessing - that was the thought that passed through his mind before the darkness came over him like a crashing wave. What an undeserved blessing to hear his name, full of compassion and care, as the last thing he would ever hear. 

-

Although his father did not die young, Ben supposed that their deaths were more alike than he had anticipated. 

-

To his utmost shock, Ben Solo woke up again. 

His mouth still tasted like the metallic tang of blood, and his body still felt heavy. However, he no longer felt the cold of the empty throne room or that came with being seriously injured. Instead, he grabbed at his black collar, trying to escape the overwhelming heat that he felt all over. He looked down at his body. There was a large tear in his clothing in the center of his chest where the lightsaber had one been, but his actual chest looked as unblemished as it ever had. His skin looked even more translucent in the harshness of the unrelenting sun that beat down on his face. Below him, his boots struggled to keep their grip in the mounds of sand that came up to his ankle.   
  
He reached down to his belt to find his own lightsaber, the one that had been stuck through his body a few moments earlier. He found himself only reaching for an empty holster.    
  
“Are you looking for this?” A voice behind him, one he had never heard but yet somehow felt deeply familiar, shouted to him. Then there was the unmistakable sound of a lightsaber igniting. Ben turned on his heel to face the stranger, but it felt as if his whole body had been slowed down. The entire sequence felt as if he were underwater. Or in a dream. Or somehow in the afterlife. He spun for a second and stared deeply at the stranger in front of him.    
  
“No one needs to get hurt,” Ben called back to the man in front of him, “if you just returned that to me.”    
  
The figure, with its hood still drawn low over its eyes, tossed the lightsaber into the sand. The sound of hollow laughter rang over the sand dunes and off into the distance. The red weapon seems to bury itself into oblivion until it is completely swallowed up by the ground.    
  
“Are you in a position to be making threats, Skywalker?”   
  
There was a poisonous cocktail of shame and anger, liquid and hot, that pools at the bottom of his stomach. He is not a Skywalker. He never was and he never will be.    
  
“Who are you?”    
  
The figure laughed and set out to close the gap between them. He walked with speed and precision, dancing lightly across the ever-shifting ground. He walked like he was a local to this strange place, the place that Ben had determined seemed to beyond the realms of life and death. 

His characteristics come into sharp focus as he stopped in front of Ben, still unable to escape the sand that had wrapped itself around his ankles and had infiltrated his boots. His hair was warmly colored and hung near his shoulder. His eyes are honey-colored, and they are offset by the gentle line of an old scar. There is something familiar in the slope of his nose and the angle of his jaw. There was a great sadness that seemed to radiate off his being. It felt like one he had carried for a long time. He held out one hand, covered in a black glove. Everything in Ben’s bones called to him to take this hand.    
  
He did, and he felt the coolness of metal wrap around his palm.    
  
“Was it worth it?” The figured asked him quietly. “That’s what I always wanted someone to ask me. Was it worth it? Did the killing complete you? Did you feel powerful? Or did you feel like I did, that no matter what you did, it would never have been enough to keep everyone safe? To make everyone respect you?”   
  
The anger in his stomach seeps into the crushing weight of guilt and shame upon his chest. There was bile rising in his throat, and Ben recoiled from the stranger’s grasp. He scrambled to wrap his arms around himself and hide his bare chest. He felt strangely exposed.    
  
“You know the answer.” Those are the only words that Ben is able to hoarsely whisper.    
  
“You can change the answer.” The figure put his hand, still robotic and cold, onto Ben’s shoulder and gave him a gentle push. Before he could fully realize what was happening, the sand itself seemed to be swallowing him whole.

-

He woke up again, again to his surprise.    
  
His breath was shallow and he could feel the burning warmth of the blood pooling beneath his body. He grabbed at his chest, expecting to delicately touch the edges of a gaping hole. There was none there. It was just the itchy and tight feeling of brand new skin.    
  
Rey hovered over his face, her wet tears washing over him like the baptism rituals of Naboo. Her brown eyes nearly glowed in the soft lighting of the lightsaber, now kicked a few feet away from her. They were red-rimmed and watery, and it seemed like she had been crying for a long time. Ben was surprised to feel his own eyes beginning to water with grief that felt foreign and overwhelming to him, like feelings that were not his own.    
  
“Ben,” she whispered. She put her hand to rest on his cheek. He relished the feeling of another person’s touch more than he thought that he would. Although, when he flexed his palm, he could still feel the coolness of the stranger’s grasp. “Ben, you survived. It worked. It all worked.”   
  
“What worked?” He asked. His voice was more hoarse than he had expected it to be, and he practically sounded like he was still wearing the mask he had worn for so long. The blood that had now crusted on the edges of his mouth felt like it was cracking and pulling at his face.    
  
“I saved you. I brought you back to life.”    
  
Ben looked just beyond Rey to see the shattered remains of Darth Vader’s helmet still spinning on the floor, seemingly moving of their own volition. 

  
He reached up to Rey’s hand on his face and carefully intertwined her fingers with his own. Her hands were rougher than he had expected, and they seemed to almost burn with the raw power that she had just displayed. Very weakly, he reached his head up to hers, leaning into her forehead. Her tears were still wet on his face. Ben, like his father, never expected to grow old. He was unmeasurably grateful for the opportunity. 

**Author's Note:**

> i weirdly talk about blood a lot here, but i hope y'all liked it. title comes from "lion" by jena rickards who is criminally underappreciated.


End file.
